In a report Wednesday, CNN cited ‘anonymous sources’ to push a conspiracy theory that Russia covered up its communications regarding the chemical attack in Syria.
According to the network, an anonymous senior US official has claimed that the US intercepted communications between Syrian military officials which proves that Damascus was behind the attack in Idlib.
CNN then noted that evidence implicating Russia has not been unearthed, and speculated that the reason is probably because Russia is better at covering its tracks.
“The likelihood is the Russians are more careful in their communications to avoid being intercepted.” the CNN report reads.
The report states that US intelligence has communications “featuring Syrian military and chemical experts talking about preparations for the sarin attack in Idlib last week.”
The anonymous source didn’t provide any other facts or context, such as when the intercept was made, and what concrete information was contained within it.
The only specific detail given from the source is that Russia flew a drone over the hospital that was treating people injured in the attack.
The report also speculates that even if US intelligence agencies had proof of Russian involvement it probably wouldn’t make it public because “the US feels right now that it has made the case that Russian support for [Syrian President Bashar] Assad must end.”
CNN says that the source did say that the US “did not know prior to the attack it was going to happen.”
Meanwhile, the Syrian President has echoed Vladimir Putin’s claim that the attack was a ‘false flag’ set up to justify US military strikes.
Assad went further than Putin, specifically saying that the US was behind the attack, and that it is a 100 per cent fabrication”:
“Our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is hand-in-glove with the terrorists. They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack.” Assad said in an interview with AFP.
Assad also claimed that the Syrian army ‘gave up’ all its chemical weapons in 2013, and said “Even if we have them, we wouldn’t use them.”
The Syrian leader declared that he will only allow a probe into the attack if it is ‘impartial’.
“We can only allow any investigation when it’s impartial, when we make sure that unbiased countries will participate in this delegation in order to make sure that they won’t use it for politicized purposes.” Assad said.
The Syrian President also said that Syrian firepower is ‘not affected’ by the US missile strike, and added that the US is ‘not serious’ about finding a political solution to the civil war because “they want to use it as an umbrella for the terrorists.”
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